SeymourYuna Drabbles
by Prayer Machine
Summary: A collection of poems, drabbles and everything else that amounts to nothing more than scraps and shreds. As incoherent as they are, I hope you enjoy them, regardless.
1. Chapter 1

He had never seen a girl like her. A girl who had somehow stepped into this world completely unmarred. A girl who seemed like fresh dough, malleable. A girl with newborn skin, shaped and stung and changed by everyone and everything around her.

She soaked herself in her experiences and wore other people's words like a cowl. His skin, on the other hand, was dark and muddy and dirtied and scratched - a hard, solid core that blocked everything else out. But not her. Not her because she was like water, and she bubbled and swayed and slipped through the cracks and burned his fresh skin like acid. She washed away his dirt, and took it on instead.

Yes, she was like water. Still lying, barely flowing. Lukewarm. She passed through each and every person and cleaned them. She babbled like a baby, but made her simple words cut through like a wail. And everyone wanted to drink from her. Steal from her. Guzzle up her words and liquid eyes and tiny smiles, drink until she filled them to bursting, drink until there was nothing left.

Yet as more and more drank. As she passed over them time and time again. As all their dirt spilled unto her. She became soiled. Stagnant. Ruined.

But he would not let her become such a sad story.


	2. But He is Warm

But he is warm.

When they made love, he said her shoulders were like the peaks of Gagazet. She was reminded of all those summoners so desperately padded beneath the snow, their bodies never sent or broken into pyreflies - useless limbs and weapon-things jutting out for nobody. He whispered that he was not one of them, that he was warm and would withstand any storm.

When they made love, he said she had eyes like the moonflow. She was reminded of the stories that she never got to see, of body-dust burning brilliantly over an ever flowing river. He whispered that she would never need to see it, that she had eyes coloured like the most beautiful pyreflies he had ever seen. He said that he would like to go swimming in them, to drown in them.

When they made love, he said that her heart was his home. She was reminded of Baaj, and thought of lying down upon the blood words - of letting him fuck her into oblivion in that broken, tattered place that was the last chunk of his heart, still sinking. Still breaking. And he promised that one day he would take her heart and it would live inside him — forever.

He slowly told her that he hated every single living thing on this good planet. He slowly let her into his secret, that he had walked to every corner of these islands, across whole continents twice and ten times over - and how he hated every grain of sand, every fleck of dirt. He told her that Gagazet would one day crumble, that the moonflow would be sucked dry, and that the only home left would float forever in the skies, where her heart would be the only beating, writhing thing.

He meant it in a metaphorical sense. She was to die, like every other - such a gift he would not spare from her.

He was beautiful and brilliant and shining and a god that she had conjured from her own hands.

Her shoulders ebbed away.

She felt herself spinning, felt her feet a million miles off of the ground, tumbling and falling and going round and round. Seymour was wrong. She was not Gagazet, not Moonflow, not Baaj. She was human and flesh and bone and covered in holes to be fucked and he had ruined, soiled, _loved her _and she spread her arms out as her fingers scapped the sky.

Her eyes became liquid and leaked right out of her sockets.

She was the bird hurtling herself into heaven's edge. She was blind and unseeing and could feel only him pulsing like a wave through and over her, destroying every piece of her as he went.

His spear drove through her heart.

He was wrong. (But he is warm.)

She did not live on forever with him, within him.

She was nothing.

The world went with her.


	3. Dark Holes

When she looked at him, his pupils dilated.

As if his eyes were opening up a path for her, a hole to fall down, a void to be swallowed in.

As if he was inviting her inside, opening the door to whatever was in him.

And she grew curious to see whatever furniture he kept, what objects he kept above the fireplace, to see the colour of his wallpaper, the dust on his shelves.

But he had already shown her all there was to see.

Those wide, dark holes.


	4. Fill Me

Fill my mouth  
with your lines  
with your lies  
with your love.

Teach me the twitch  
of your lips  
in fear or  
passion.

Teach me the fold  
of your hands  
that hide your  
words.

Teach me the tilt  
of your head  
as you swallow  
rage.

Fill my head  
with your thoughts  
with your words  
with your sighs.

Let me swell to burst  
crawl inside of me  
fingers legs and toes  
let me carry you.

So that someone  
may remember you  
when you are dead  
forever


	5. Holes for Rabbits

"This is a blessing from Yevon!"

Guado midwives wrapped their leathery hands over her own, their heat neither comforting nor noticeable and too many of them swarm for her to thank each one. Instead she grunted and squealed and moaned with eyes half shut, toes curling in on themselves. They whispered soft prayers over her. They tossed petals over her body. They decorated her in ritual.

The room was hot and too thick with Bevellian red. She heard the unlatching of a window, felt the sweep of a breeze over her like a cool tide. She wished, so wished, that it would sweep her out of this room. She could go sailing. The ocean could do nothing to harm her.

"Push, my Lady."

She chastised herself for thinking such things. She must not run from her pain.

Her hands clenched and her breathing warped. Her head rolled back, her eyes focussing on a moth that flung itself repeatedly at the wall. Such delicate little wings. Such hard thumps.

She unclenched her hands. Her bare hands. No claws rested in her palm.

"Push."

Her eyes rolled back into her head. Beads rattled in her ear. She could see a hole, an abyss opening in the back of her mind. Like the rabbit holes that punctured the calm lands. A splotch against her vision, like she had stared into the light. That spot fractured and broke up, a hundred more glistening in her vision. She thought of his eyes, saw his eyes form in the abyss, down the holes for rabbits.

"Push."

She saw him, beautiful and tanned. Saw him lying there, always there, always hiding. Saw the way he smiled with the left side of his face. Saw the way she broke his heart. Maybe he was whistling for her now. Maybe he was waiting on her whistle. Could he save her from labour, could he save her from childbirth?

She'd already crashed down on the shore.

He would come running the wreck she made of herself.

"Push."

How could dreamy days with pilgrimages and Sin and death wrapped around her ankles be better than this?

"Push."

How could she not remember the chopped limbs that Seymour so dared her to remember, the sea turned red and black with blood and people-ash, the thousand souls all looking for a way back home and she the only guiding hand to give the answer? How could she forget all that, forget all of them and all their prayers and sacrifices and remember instead the arch of a smile, the curve of a nose, the pitch of a laugh?

It was selfish.

"Push."

Where was he?

"Push."

He was scaring her.

"Push."

He must have been caught in the Sunday evening traffic… of breadsellers and wine dealers packing up and standing directly in his way. There must have been an accident. The roads must have been blocked.

"Push."

She head the door open and saw a tinge of blue over the crowd of weatherbeaten faces. She let out a cry, one that was meant to be happy.

"Push."

She saw his softskinned face, his little nose, his splattering of veins. She saw everything and wanted to touch him, wanted to weep for thinking of the boy down the rabbit hole. This was worth it, this had all been worth it. He met her eyes. She lit up, a glow within her warming her body.

He looked away.

Her face fell.

Seymour hurried out of the room, a hand slipped over his face like a veil.

And that was all she saw of him. The man who had stood by her on the holy mountain. The man who summoned all things powerful and rattling and cloaked in chains. The man who breathed power and gentleness and spoke of wisdom beyond his years. He left her with a pained look.

No.

A frightened look.

"_Push."_

She spat out the only thing he'd given her.


	6. Hummingbirds

fill my mouth with hummingbirds  
so i can hear  
how loud their wings beat  
under my tongue.  
so i can feel  
the drumming of their hearts  
through my teeth.

fill my mouth with hummingbirds  
so i can taste  
the nectar on their honey beaks  
the song in their milky throats  
the wetness of their dewdrop eyes.

fill my mouth with hummingbirds  
so i can eat  
crack  
break  
something more beautiful  
than you or I  
will ever be.


	7. Connotation

my love  
_my love  
_**my love  
**_my _love


	8. I Will Love you Forever

i want to dig my nails into your earth  
to part the filth and crusted shit  
to pull out all your worms and parasites  
to dig and dig and dig you out raw

i want to part your earth  
and leave you hollow, emptied out  
until all that remains is your bedrock  
and the words you carved there

I will love you forever.

when all the universe sheds itself into colddust  
when all things in the land sky sea melt into atomdust  
when all the words in the world have turned into nothingdust  
and all things have been scooped  
out  
like the earth you buried yourself in  
there will be life's bedrock

and scrawled there  
will be your words  
on my still, unbeating heart.


	9. Overgrown

there's a hole

inside of me

where you lie.

i have been

watering

nourishing

keeping you alive.

im swollen

with your roots

your leaves

your thorns.

its time

to dig you out

stuff you under

my fingernails.

but im afraid

in place of your

frightening

twisting

overgrown

life

there will be an

empty

still

breathless

nothing.


	10. Petal Grave

He stood on the edge of the world. He stood where the ocean ate rock, where it ate everything. And that which it did not consume, he did.

The cold haar was rolling in, the evening starting to blacken the edges of the sky. He walked carefully across the water, scattering petals as he did so. The soil was leached dry with the bones of a thousand dead gulls. He remembered his mother telling him that bodies could be used to grow the food they ate.

She'd killed the earth.

Now, there would be nothing to remember her by. He flexed his hands, dropping the very last of the pink-red flowers.

Skipping, running over the last few meters, he dropped the stems and stood by the water's side. They looked so pretty, those petals. He saw fiends whose names he'd long forgotten circling beneath them, and even they began to look pretty. The strange shapes they made, the flow of their fins, their unending desire to kill, kill, kill.

He'd imagined for a long time that it was those flowers that had been blooming in his body. That the blood that ran thick was not so red and not so liquidy and it wasn't that that squeezed out through his skin whenever something cut him wide open - it was petals and beautiful things because beauty came from the inside, as mother always said.

And as the flowers began to die out, as the worn temple's insides began to look just as worn as the outside - he realized how rotten that idea was. Everything was blood and guts or stone and dust, whatever way you looked at it or whatever things you covered it with.

And as the very last flower wilted and he stole the petals from it and any other that still had a little bit of colour, as he tossed them into the ocean and watched half-dead thing swim under them, he realized a very important thing. And softly, so softly he whispered,

This world can not be saved.

—

She was his garden.

She had roses in her breath, opium in her kiss (or so he imagined) and he wanted to cut her open so he could see all the little petals fall out of her. To prove that she was not human but from the fables he'd woven as a child. To prove that she was hibiscus. She was cyanide.

She grew out of the bodies of the dead, her roots glittering and tied to the sky, thrust up and thrust away with every turn and twist of her body and arms that were not, could not, be human.

And even as he grew hungrier by the day, began to realize the philosophies of the fiends, began to imagine nothing else but kill, kill, killing - she made him realize.

She was more bountiful than the overgrown shelters in Guadosalam, more open and wide and opulent than the fields of the farplane. She filled him with sap and made his bark skin crack open and let every living thing come spewing out of him, slipping through at first - but soon demanding, bursting, exhausting him. It was the bloom in her eyes, the way she stayed closed but he could see her wide open - like a flower bared only to the moon, the endurance of a bristlecone pine, but to be ended in the lifespan of white clover.

How could this world bare to survive when that flower withered and died?

He'd pick the last of her petals.

He'd scatter her on the Calm Lands. Those lovely, red-pink petals. And when the greatest fiend of them all circled above, he would stand in awe of its beauty. He would realize a very important thing. And softly, so softly, he would whisper,

This world can be saved.


	11. She Lies With The Dead

She lies with the dead.

—

Her bones are wrought of iron. His are made of paper. He says that she is made of fire. That she burns him alive, and he does nothing but crumble and fade away.

He is loose poetry and sweet words, perfumed and gilded. He is light that blazes in the darkness, footsteps in fresh snow that do not tremble between the bodies. He is strength and courage and all things that deserve to swell in her, reinforce the iron, lift her up above the clouds. He would lift her up, up and up and offer her to the maw of Zanarkand, and nothing could make more sense.

Yet it was not Zanarkand's haunted jaws that frightened her, not those dusty graveyard teeth dripping with pyreflies and yawning holes that stretched into infinity. She was a dove trained to fly up and up and up until she smashed against heaven's edge. No, nothing like that frightened her, any more.

But those blue eyes… Blueblueblue, oceans swallowing. But such poetry was undeserved. He was a bastard. A plain and simple bastard. Egotistical, narcissistic, cruel, merciless, twisted, and broken. (And she loved him) she ignored.

Nultide drifted round her skirt, the only source of soft blue light in the darkness. A baby gurgled softly on her back, and she followed the road and hoped that no one would ever see her again.

It was not those blue eyes that scared her, not the bastard shrouded in beads and sweet scented oil. It was not the words he said, not the strange, mysterious, far off way his face fell in on its self when he whispered of death and all its bounties. It was not the way he worshipped, lavished, loved an idea that was not her.

He would send those sharp nails to claw open any town, any city, any rock. He would throw people away like parasites, and whine that it was all in her name. She would sink and shift beneath the sands and he would overturn every grain. He would burn cities to bathe her feet in ash.

But that was not what scared her.

Her bright eyes scoured the darkness, desperate to find the outline of Gagazet. Finding it, she recharted her way, hurrying on boots never meant for walking down the silent road.

She trembled as the wind rushed up her sleeves. She never thought of turning back.

What scared her was the anger, the mercilessness, the twisted, broken narcissistic and egotistical things that swelled in her. The soup he made of her, the emotions she kept so locked beneath the curtain of patience, the only things her splintered mask had tried so hard to hold back.

And she was dying.

That… should have been scary, too.


	12. Sob Story

Yuna breathes into her hands.

Beads lace between her fingers and she holds onto them as though they are everything in the world. They push and pull and slide over her soft palm, and she breathes into them, breathes over them, breathes them.

_I need you._

Her hair is thick with sweat. It's falling loose, like a disheveled rag around her face. Her lips pass heavy and awkward breaths, that turn quick and make her lungs shudder. Her eyes are heavy and tired, and she knows her body is nothing like it used to be.

_Please, come back to me._

She regrets all the things she's ever eaten. She scorns herself for the fat pushing against her feathered dress, for the breath that is hollow and forced and like blood in her lungs. She wishes she had gone running, hiking - even, up Gagazet every morning instead of taking the hovercars. She was dying on the inside, she was spoiled rotten, she was a fruit that was ripe ten years ago and now had burst and gone black.

_I know, you have always been here with me._

Deep beneath her skin, she feels something tremble. Like a pot that falls from the shelf, like a rock from the top of the pile, something falls and and when it hits the ground everything shakes.

Outside, she hears fires burning. They are nothing compared to the fire that starts in her throat, the fire in her lungs, her heart, her stomach. The fire that should be here, the fire she is sure she can remember from a distant memory - one that seems covered in dust and sea-rust, now. If only she could clear that all away, clear away the missing spaces, clear away the ash - then, then she could feel just a flicker, a spark tickle her fingers. If only, if only, if only.

_Why did you have to leave? I don't understand._

She can hear her daughter babbling, just outside her bedroom. She's twelve and beautiful and Yuna hates and loves her with everything in her being. She must be hungry. She must be looking for her. She must want something from her, always something, always take take taking everything she has. Yuna is done with being taken from, it is time for her to give.

If she comes in the room, her concentration will be destroyed. She grips harder on the prayer beads, squeezing them tightly, holding shut her eyes and remembering the shapes of words. She thinks of the sea of the sun of the sand, and her fingers slacken.

The whole city is burning. Maybe it would burn itself off the map.

_Don't you remember me?_

The soft babbling stops. Maybe she's gone away forever.

_I loved you._

Yuna whines. Her eyebrows arch, frustration melts her brain.

_I can do this, but only with you._

Why did it have to be this way? Why couldn't it… have ended, long ago?

Her eyes open.

_I can feel you. _

She can, and it wraps around her and makes her shake. She feels everything lighten, she feels the sea in her brain - melting everything away. Clouds open, the sky is very blue.

Her heart bursts. It doesn't burst, it stops. It stops and her eyes open and she can _feel _she can _feel _and it is like the entire world is flowing into her, like deserts and sands and memories and happiness is in her veins and is opening her up until she is not flesh and bone any more, she is the air and this essence and she is she is she i-

The door opens.

She recognizes him instantly.

Her beads fall from her hands, coiling up on the floor. She turns her head, eyes wild.

Seymour stands over the doorway. She remembers him, now, she remembers him when Sin came. The way he stood and watched as Sin swam over Bevelle. The way he stood and watched while the entire city flashed into broken things. The way he stood, with eyes that were the saddest she had ever seen and his arms spread as if welcoming in death.

He didn't move when she brushed her fingers over his face. He didn't even react as she screamed in his ear. He didn't know who she was, all he was was a memory.

Yuna had not left his side.

She had been stupid.

Yet Sin came in to wait (the first time it had been after the Long Calm, twelve years, twelve wasted years). It waited, hovering in the wreckage of all of Bevelle. It waited, as though expecting Seymour to make his move while she prayed and prayed and prayed and nothing answered her.

And then it turned and swept away.

Seymour had cried.

And now, here he was, in her doorway.

He is silent, and she knew he'd seen the prayer beads and she knew he had seen her.

"… Aeons do not take kindly to summoners who have failed their pilgrimages," he says. He says as though this was all her fault and she felt like it was all of a sudden and everything sunk through her.

"No," she wheezes, rising to her feet. "They do not."

But he is wrong.

She had felt. She had felt. She grinds her thumb into her palm.

_Valefor. _


	13. The Dust in You

All these stars  
Gave up  
In their last moments  
The unfortunate dust  
That made you and I

Just one  
Final  
Slow moving  
Exhale  
That expanded, burning  
Into our forms

Dust  
Is not a heralded thing  
It is that which you rub from your eyes  
That you slap from your shoes  
Insignificant  
Ugly

But you know everything about  
Dust, don't you, my dear?  
You are half dust, dragged from  
The deserts, and swimming through  
The beaches

You have danced on pyre-dust  
Whispered hymns to ancient shrines  
And half dead things  
Suspended  
Floating  
Wafting through the light.

Dust is  
The shedding of life  
The particles that once  
Manifested potential and now  
Amass

Dust is  
Everything you have ever known  
And everything I have come to know  
I love the dust in you  
Oh, please

Let me see it.  
Let me feel it.  
Pure.  
Raw.  
Yours.


	14. They Broke Everything

Their souls rose and wavered  
Through the water, through your toes  
They were pulling, begging you  
To break them.

With a dance  
With a step, step, turn, bow  
With salt dazzling your eyes  
With a watersmile on your face,

You broke everything.  
Every cycle  
Every breath  
Every soul

You broke, snapped, ripped them  
Free  
But you saved  
No one.

With feathers on your spine you could  
F  
L  
Y

But with bruises on your heart you could  
Not cry  
As he walked away, shimmering  
Through the air, through your fingers  
With your watersmile  
And saltdazzled eyes.

I'm so sorry  
Girl with resolve burning in her eyes  
Saltdazzled, watersmiler, beastdancer  
Sorrow prevailed.

You broke everything  
To be broken  
In return.


End file.
